Second to last day in Iceland! I
didn't have any scheduled activities this morning, so I woke up later
than usual and when I sat up I realized I was feeling the pain from
horseback-riding. Combined with still being sore from snorkeling and
glacier-hiking, and I have 3 days worth of activities wearing out my
muscles, so basically it hurts when I sit or walk. Standing still
however, is thankfully okay.
Since I had no activities I had time to
stuff myself at the breakfast buffet. There are always these fish
pieces that look like they're fermenting in a metal bin and I was
never sure what it was, so I dropped a big piece on my plate out of
curiosity and when I sat down I popped the whole thing in my mouth...
and I got my taste of cured shark meat. Oh my god does that taste
bad. Imagine pickling a shark and you'll have a good idea of what it
tastes like. At least I can cross that off my Iceland to-do list.
I headed to the city center to check
out the Settlement Museum finally – my first museum in Iceland. It
was actually a pretty neat exhibit. They uncovered the remains of a
Viking long house from around 800 AD back in 2001 when they were
constructing a new building, so they built the museum all around the
foundations of that house so when you walk the exhibit you're walking
around the actual remains of that building. They suspect that it
belonged to the first settlers of Reykjavik so it's a pretty cool
thing to have right in the current city center.
Then I went to have lunch at Hofnin,
this place right by the harbor that I wanted to try because it has a
catch of the day lunch special, which was haddock today. Probably
one of the fancier restaurants I've been to, but I'm in vacation mode
and not feeling uncomfortable about eating out by myself in a fancy
restaurant so it's all good. My love of food wins out over any
awkwardness. The catch of the day came with a creamy mushroom soup,
and then the fish came out with green beans and potatoes. Since I
had the breakfast buffet I wasn't that hungry but I still finished
pretty much all of lunch. Oh I think the vacation weight is coming
around nicely.
It started raining so after lunch I
ducked into Volcano House, a cafe/souvenir shop/movie theater that
shows 2 movies on well, Iceland volcanoes. One was about an eruption
in 1973 in the Westmann Islands that lasted for 5 months and buried a
town in volcanic ash. The other was about volcanoes in general in
Iceland, with a focus on Eyjafjalljokull that erupted last year.
They were a nice way to kill time but overpriced for the lengths, and
I don't know how that place stays in business when there aren't any
tourists around.
Then I checked out some souvenir shops
to plan my luggage packing for tomorrow; remember how I said I was
going to load up on Icelandic souvenirs? Well scratch that. They
are a lot more expensive than I thought, and the Icelandic wool is
really scratchy in general. The sweaters are cute because they have
that U-shaped snowflake design that runs between the shoulders that a
lot of Icelanders wear but with all the ones I've seen costing over
$100 it's not something I'm going to load up on. Even t-shirts cost
over $30 each. Looks like it'll just be the standard cheesy Viking
key chains.
At 5 p.m. I went to a whale-watching
tour run by Elding, the environmentally friendly company. These
people from the International Fund for Animal Welfare were handing
out these fliers on the streets by the harbor with the slogan, “Meet
us, don't eat us!” referring to commercial whaling in Iceland,
which the season just started a few days ago. The eating of whale
meat is supposedly catered to tourists as a normal Icelandic dish
when not that many Icelanders eat it. I couldn't bring myself to try
it, or puffins as a meal either. The boat stopped by one of the
puffin colonies since it is breeding season, and they are really kind
of awkward birds. They float on the water, and then when they start
flying it is very ungraceful with very rapid flapping. But they mate
for life and lay one egg every year and they are too unique and cute to even
think about eating.
The whale-watching itself was decent.
I don't know why I always attempt to take pictures during
whale-watching because they never come out good or the whale takes up
only 2% of the photo. It's very difficult to get a good picture
without knowing the swimming patterns. Our boat found some harbor
porpoises and a lot of minke whales (the smallest baleen whales) and
the narrator was shouting out “12 o'clock!” and different times
to tell us where the whales were being spotted. He was a pretty
amusing guy, gasping and saying, “Wow, this is so exciting. Minke
whales everywhere!” with his Icelandic accent and he said what a
good tour it was when it ended. Since this is his job I'll assume
that when he gets this excited, we saw a lot more than is usually
seen. We did find a feeding ground and got fairly close to some
minke whales but I would not say Reykjavik is one of the top places
for whale-watching. The puffin colony was good but we were pretty
far out and my camera's 20x zoom was not enough to get a good shot of
the birds. Then it also got pretty cold standing right at the front
of the boat and my hands were numb so I ducked into the inside cabin
on the ride back.
Afterwards I headed to Vitobar for
dinner since it's famous for its burgers, and it was a very small bar
but I ordered the blue cheese burger with fries and a giant Coke, and
it was a very satisfying meal and reasonably-priced. Tomorrow I'm
planning on breakfast buffet, then a hot dog for lunch, then an early
dinner (something with lamb since I haven't had that here yet), and
then some Icelandic dessert. Yes, it's just a food day tomorrow
along with souvenir shopping and random photos of the city. Some of
the streets here are pretty interesting because the houses all are
shaped the same but are painted different colors, so you can have a
street with a red, yellow, green, blue house all next to each other.
There's also a lot of artistic graffiti on some of the houses too.
It'll be a nice relaxing (and delicious) way to end my trip here.
